A day off for the climate

It was Ferris Bueller’s day off, and we all found out about it. The craziest scene I remember in the movie is the Ferrari wheels running in reverse to undo the mileage put on it by the two miscreants going to pick up Ferris’s girlfriend. But the movie pales next to the exploits of the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who protested against Swedish inaction on climate issues for three weeks outside the Parliament building.

But, wait, wasn’t she supposed to be in school? That was just the point, and on March 15 of this year, an estimated 1.4 million students from 112 countries joined her and walked out of their classrooms for a day. Ferris, on the other hand, was responsible only for three children missing school.

Still, if Thunberg played by current rules regarding climate action, missing a little school would be a blip on the world’s radar. Being a teenager with Aspergers, her take on irony is a little different than most. When invited to the World Economic Forum at Davos, she accepted the invitation, but did not fly there -- she spent 32 hours on the train to attend. Climate scientists have chosen to take the train to conferences rather than fly, so this wasn’t too unusual for a climate activist.

But now, she wanted to attend the UN Climate Summit in New York City. How does a climate activist get there from Sweden? Grabbing a page from Christopher Columbus, she plans to sail on the most advanced fossil-free sailboat available, a sailboat with turbines and solar panels to make the trip faster.

Conservatives like to bash on Al Gore for his extravagant lifestyle and seeing people arrive to climate conferences in jets and limousines provides plenty of fodder for YouTube videos. It’s hard for those who accept the science of climate change to follow through on their convictions with action. But we’re being shown a better way by a teenager who represents the world’s young people’s hopes and aspirations for a clean and healthy environment. We need to figure out for ourselves how to tread softly on our biosphere. As for Ferris, well, that was just a movie.